Flesh Eaters (7 page)

The dummy’s arm that Anthony was now holding up so proudly was just one more excuse for his younger brother to needle him.

Anthony stuck the dripping arm around the side of the windscreen, the hand inching toward Brent’s crotch. “You want me jack you off?” he said, speaking in a falsetto Vietnamese hooker voice. “Me got kung fu grip. Jack you off long time.”

Brent swatted the hand away. “Jesus. Cut it out.” He wiped the water from his pants. “Quit laughing, asshole. What are you, like six?” He sat down again, his big hands draped over the top of the wheel. He was trying his best to look tough and pissed, but only came across as rattled.

“You got problem with your wee-wee, big boy?” Anthony said, still in his hooker voice. “You no like me? Come on, you not too beaucoup for Rosie.”

“I said cut it out.”

“You sure? Rosie here’s about as close as you’re gonna get to a woman for a while.”

“Throw it back in the water,” Brent said. “Please.”

“Fine,” Anthony said, and threw the mannequin’s arm away. “But you know, you need to learn to have fun every once in a while. Being with you is like having Eeyore for a brother.”

Anthony got up and went to the back of the boat, where Jesse Numeroff was giving their dive gear a final once-over.

Brent watched him go, then hit the throttle and got them back on their way, trying his best not to think about the dull thuds he kept hearing against the bottom of the boat.

“Hey, Brent, what’s that?”

They had just rounded a thick copse of trees. Ahead of them, a perfectly straight white line stretched across the floodwater.

Brent killed the throttle and scanned the water ahead. “Shit,” he said.

“What is it?”

Jesse Numeroff was coming forward now. He looked left, then right, following the track of the white line.

“No way around it,” Jesse said. “Looks like we’re gonna have to swim from here.”

Like Anthony, Jesse was short and slender and fast, built like an infielder. He and Anthony had been best friends since high school, where they’d played baseball together. Now he was a member of the Houston Fire Department’s elite High-Water Rescue Unit. When they were planning this operation, Anthony had suggested bringing in Jesse because of his dive skills, and their father, who had always liked Jesse, agreed without hesitation. And just like that, the three of them had fallen into the old familiar pattern. Anthony and Jesse were the Wonder Twins, the ones in charge. Brent was the chauffeur, the guy who carried the heavy stuff, the butt of their jokes.

Anthony was standing beside Jesse now, looking at the white line in the water. “Okay, I give. What the hell is that?”

“That’s the retaining wall for the Beltway,” Brent said. “The top of it anyway. I can get you right up to it, but there’s no way to get the boat over that without tearing up the hull.”

“Just go around it?”

“It’s too far,” Brent said. “It’d take us an hour either way to get around it.”

“Be quicker to swim it,” Jesse said. “The
Santa Fe
’s about a mile that way, through those trees.”

“I guess we don’t have any other choice, do we?” Anthony said.

“Not really.”

Brent turned the boat to their right and followed the retaining wall until they came to a purple charter bus up to its rearview mirrors in water.

“I can tie off here pretty easy,” he said to Jesse. “Will this be a good landmark for you come back to?”

“Yeah,” Jesse said, “this’ll work fine.”

Anthony and Jesse went to the back of the boat and donned their gear. As they climbed over the side, Brent said, “How long do you think this’ll take?”

“Five to six hours, I’m guessing,” Anthony said. “You gonna be okay hanging out here?”

Brent nodded.

“You sure?” Anthony said, smiling wickedly. “All these dead bodies. You’re not gonna get too spooked?”

“Fuck you,” Brent muttered.

He grabbed a pair of AR-15s and handed them to Anthony, who passed one to Jesse.

“Lighten up, big bro. I’m just funning with you. You shouldn’t have any trouble. But just in case, like if a Coast Guard team shows up or something, have them call Dad at the EOC.”

“I know what to do,” Brent said. And then, almost below his breath: “I can take care of myself.”

Anthony slid his goggles down over his eyes.

“I know you can. I’m just telling you because the old man told me to. Oh, and steer clear of the trees. Water moccasins like to get up in there during floods.”

Brent glanced at the nearby oaks and swallowed. Anthony was still messing with his head, he knew that, but he couldn’t help it. Snakes, like decomposing bodies, were one of his phobias.

He turned back to Anthony and tried his best to sound confident and in control, like their father.

“I got this, Anthony. You just do your part and I’ll do mine.”

Anthony laughed, gave him a thumbs-up, and then he and Jesse slid away from the boat, gliding silently through the murky water.

They dog-paddled most of the way to keep their legs out of the rubble that lurked just below the surface. Once they got out of earshot of the boat, Jesse said, “Hey, how did Brent’s Internal Affairs case work out?”

“Which one?”

“There’s another one?” Jesse asked. “I was talking about him being AWOL. Which one are you talking about?”

“He wrecked his police car again.”

“No way, really? What is that, like three this year?”

“The crash review board gave him a fifteen-day suspension right before Gabriella, but my dad got it put on hold until we see what’s gonna happen with Mardel.”

“That was cool of your dad.”

Anthony laughed. “He wasn’t happy about it, that’s for sure.”

“No, I bet not.”

They paddled on in silence. This close to the Ship Channel, they had a clear view of the damage Hurricane Kyle’s storm surge had caused. Vast fields of garbage were strewn across the flooded landscape. Billboards were little more than skeletons with only a few scraps hanging from them. Telephone poles had been upended and tossed like driftwood against buildings that had every window blasted out. Nothing moved, and there was no sound but the splashing of their feet as they dog-paddled on and on.

They came to an eighteen-wheeler and Jesse climbed up on top of the cab and looked east.

“Not too much farther,” he called down to Anthony. “There’s a trailer park up ahead. Should be just on the other side of that.”

He climbed down and dropped into the water next to Anthony.

“Hey,” Jesse said, “listen, I gotta ask you something.”

“Shoot,” said Anthony.

“It’s about Brent.”

“Yeah?”

“Your dad’s been covering for him a lot lately.”

“Yeah, so? You’ve known my dad long enough to know he’s not gonna let his kid down when he’s going through a rough spot. That’s not the kind of man he is.”

“I know that. I wouldn’t have agreed to get on board with this little operation if I didn’t know that.”

“So what are you trying to say, Jesse?”

“Well, it’s just that it seems like Brent’s been going through a little more than a rough spot. Seems like it’s more serious than that.”

Anthony didn’t answer.

Though Jesse hadn’t said the words out loud, they were back to Brent’s drinking again. The subject had been coming up a lot lately, at work, at home, all the time. Brent had always been a heavy drinker, even back when they were in high school. But over the past year or so it had gotten way out of hand. From what Anthony had heard, Brent was calling in sick a lot, burning up his accrued leave bank. And there were other warning signs of bad things to come. Brent was obsessed with drinking. He talked about drinking all the time. He was irritable. They had grown apart since Anthony joined the SWAT Unit, but on the few occasions they’d hung out recently, Brent had gotten really blitzed, followed by blackouts the next day. It was troubling to watch him struggle, completely unwilling to talk about what was obviously going wrong in his world.

And Anthony didn’t even want to think about the sudden rise in Brent’s on-duty police car crashes. In the seven years he’d been a policeman, Anthony had known more than a few cops who pickled themselves in booze. It was a common enough thing, considering all the shit your average street cop sees in his career. But even though it was common, and tolerated to some degree because nobody wanted to cut a fellow cop out of his pension, it was never cool. Drunks were taken off the street, pushed into some meaningless job where they didn’t interact with the public, where they couldn’t fuck anything up. Cops like that, they became pariahs. The department’s black sheep. They were snickered at behind their backs. Eventually, they were forgotten. Anthony bristled at the idea that his own brother was on the verge of becoming one of those kinds of cops. It stirred a vague sense of hostility somewhere down in his guts, coiling like a big snake.

“You think he’s gonna be able to do his part in this?” Jesse said.

Anthony kept his eyes straight ahead.

“He’ll be fine,” he said.

“Hey, don’t get upset, man. I’m just saying. I mean, I signed up for this because I trust you and your dad all the way. I respect you both. You’re capable. But . . . your brother, I mean, let’s face it, Anthony, he’s a drunk. I like him and all, but I don’t want him to—”

“It’s not open for discussion, Jesse. He’s in this with us. He’s my brother, and I’m not gonna leave him out of the money.”

“I don’t begrudge him the money,” Jesse said. “That’s not what I’m driving at. He gets a share just like the rest of us. I’m cool with that. I’m just saying that, you know, he might not be able to do his part in the operation. That’s all I’m saying.”

“He’ll do fine. Now drop it.”

Jesse looked at him, then nodded slowly.

“Sure,” he said. “Okay.”

A short distance away they came upon the ruins of a trailer park. The destruction they had seen up to that point was incredible, though most of it was still underwater, only the tops of buildings and cars still visible. The worst of it was left up to the imagination. But here, in this trailer park, which was at a slightly higher elevation than most of the surrounding area, the water had for the most part receded, and what was left was far worse than either of them had imagined.

They rose to their feet as the water grew shallow, clipped their flippers to their belts between their legs, and walked through knee-high water, their heads on swivels as they scanned the wrecked trailer park. Several trailers were on their sides, tumbled together like a child’s blocks. Some had been crushed by fallen trees. One was split nearly in half by a shrimp boat. Everywhere they looked they saw endless piles of lumber and roof shingles. There wasn’t an unbroken window anywhere. Tree limbs and leaves and brown sea plants clung to everything.

And there were bodies. Lots of bodies.

Mud had poured into one of the trailers and set like a lava flow. Inside, Anthony saw a mother with her arms still wrapped around a child, partially buried in the muck that had invaded their living room.

Anthony looked upon the desolate scene, on the ruined trailers, the toys and lawn chairs and the piles of gray, warped lumber, the broken windows so like eyes, the damp piles of leaves covering everything, and he felt a depression more complete than any he had previously thought possible. Those who knew him would never confuse Anthony for a deep thinker. Since boyhood, when he discovered that both baseball and girls came easily for him, little else occupied his thoughts. And so it surprised him to encounter such a complex web of feeling upon seeing this place. He was at once sickened and afraid. Turning his head slowly from one wrecked trailer to the next he wondered what it was that was making him feel such dread, such loneliness, but he couldn’t quite grasp it. Whatever it was that rattled him so was just out of reach, an elusive thing, a half-resolved and ominous
it
lurking in the darkness, waiting to put a cold hand upon his shoulder.

With a tightness in his chest and the stench of rot and open sewage seeping into his mask, he continued on.

They saw a mangy black dog eating something that looked like a human leg.

Anthony didn’t hesitate.

He raised his rifle and dropped the animal with a single shot. And after the sound of that shot died away, Anthony stood watching the animal. Despite all he had seen, this was the worst. That dog, eating on a human corpse, somehow brought everything into focus, and in that instant he realized that he was witnessing the end of the first half of his life. Just like that.

Abruptly, a strange memory surfaced in his mind. He remembered riding in his father’s boat out on Clear Lake as a kid, the wind in his hair as he reached over the side, slapping the spray while his dad taught Brent to steer and work the throttle. They had passed a buoy, and Anthony, momentarily fascinated by it, had turned and asked his dad why it was there.

“It’s the dividing line,” his dad had said, “between the lake and Galveston Bay. From here on out, we’re in deep water.”

It was that last phrase that hung in Anthony’s mind now.

Deep water
, he thought.
Yeah, that was it. Deep water. That dog eating that corpse’s leg, it was like a buoy, and everything from here on out is deep water. There’s no coming back from this. The city of Houston is dying, even if it doesn’t know it yet.

He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and turned toward it.

“You see that?” he asked Jesse. He pointed to a trailer, the inside dark as a cave. “Over there.”

Jesse scanned the trailer.

“No, what’d you see?”

“There’s somebody in there. I don’t see ’em now.”

They were at a lower elevation now, the water up to their thighs. Jesse sank down into the water so that just his head was above water.

“If it’s a survivor we’ll pick ’em up on the way back,” he said. “Come on. The ship should be just around those trees up there.”

Anthony’s gaze lingered on the trailer a moment longer; then he sank down into the water and followed after Jesse.

They rounded a copse of trees and there it was.

The
Santa Fe
.